Britain’s always somewhat smug pride in its institutions has come a real cropper in the parliamentary expenses scandal of the past two weeks with no catharsis yet in view.

The public has watched with mounting rage as evidence swills out of MPs claiming for everything from cleaning moats to bath plugs, plasma TVs to chandeliers. Some claim on phantom mortgages, others “flip” houses in the property market and yet others have artfully avoided capital gains tax. While some MPs believe this was a camouflaged but legitimate way of raising their salary, the citizens they serve see it as an insolent sense of entitlement by pickpockets of the public purse. There has to be a reckoning.